Robin Hoodwinked by Governor Brown

The Los Angeles Times is referring to California Governor Jerry Brown as a “Robin Hood” for his plan to redistribute resources from “wealthy” suburban school districts to their poorer urban cousins. Brown has characterized himself as a civil rights hero since the poor urban districts serve predominantly low income communities of color, suggesting that inequitable school funding is the primary cause of the achievement gap.

Both the Times and Brown are delusional. Robin Hood robbed rich individuals and gave the spoils directly to poor people so they could feed, clothe and house themselves. Brown’s plan does nothing to reduce poverty and gives no money or resources directly to any poor students or their families.

This is no trivial criticism, as poverty is the number one cause of poor academic achievement. Poor children are far more likely than others to be born with low birth weight or suffer malnutrition or lead poisoning (10% of poor children have dangerous levels of lead in their blood according to the CDC), any of which can impair cognitive development or lead to learning disabilities. They suffer higher levels of stress, which causes the overproduction of the stress hormone cortisol, which can impair memory and learning. They are absent far more often (as much as 40% more, according to Richard Rothstein), dramatically decreasing their chances of graduating on time (see here). They have less access to enriching extracurricular activities like summer travel, camp and museum visits, which can cause the achievement gap to increase each year. Lower income families tend to read less to their babies and toddlers and expose them to fewer complex words and phrases, with the result that affluent children have vocabularies that are tens of thousands of words larger than their lower income peers even before they have entered kindergarten (see here and here).

As long as poverty persists, increasing resources to lower income schools will have very limited effect on student achievement. It certainly cannot remove the stress and anxiety that result from living a life of material scarcity and uncertainty and the ongoing sense of powerlessness that accompanies it.

The Times does correctly note that poor districts would not necessarily benefit at the expense of wealthy districts under Brown’s plan. Some poor districts, like Oakland, would actually receive less per student under the governor’s plan, according to both the state education department and the governor's own budget office.

It is also misleading to refer to some districts as “wealthy.”  Certainly some districts have higher percentages of affluent students, but this does not mean they are adequately funded publicly. There probably is no district in the state that receives sufficient funding entirely through property taxes and state and federal revenues. The wealthiest districts receive more money than the poorer districts, but not enough to keep class sizes under 35; hire sufficient nurses, librarians, counselors and teachers; purchase sufficient lab equipment and classroom supplies; or pay teachers’ salaries comparable to those in the private sector. Many of these schools are able to raise funds from parents to supplement what they receive from the state and local taxes, but there are also many lower income schools in so-called wealthy districts that do not have this capability.

Transferring resources from the “wealthy” districts will not come close to restoring what the poorer districts have lost as a result of the $20 billion the state has slashed from education funding over the past few years. Even if it did, that would only bring these schools back to a level that was grossly inadequate (California education spending was among the lowest in the nation even before the recession). “Wealthy” schools can always ramp up their fundraising from wealthy families, but they will continue to have overcrowded classrooms and underpaid teachers.

More significantly, Brown’s plan gives the illusion that he is doing something equitable and rational to mitigate the state’s education problems, when in reality he is simply holding education funding steady at the 46^th lowest level in the nation . This, in turn, allows the state to maintain historically low tax rates for the wealthy and their businesses and to continue defunding social programs that serve the poor, including transitional kindergarten.

Teachers Unions are Failing Kids AND Teachers

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Chip Johnson’s recent hit piece in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Oakland Teachers Failed Kids,” accused the Oakland Educators Association (OEA) of putting the interests of teachers above kids and cheating them out of millions in federal  Race to the Top (RttT) funds by refusing to accept student test scores (also known as Value Added Measures, or VAM) as a part of teacher evaluations.

If Johnson was really interested in better education funding, he would redirect his anger from the teachers, who have no direct control over the matter, to the legislature, which has cut over $20 billion from K-12 education over the last 4 years. This is the main reason why the feds feel they can blackmail teachers into accepting “reforms” that are detrimental to students, as well as teachers. If he wants to blame partisans, he should look to the state’s 87 billionaires (or its hundreds of thousands of millionaires) who have lobbied to get their tax rates down to record low levels; or the oil companies, which pay lower royalties here than in Alaska or Texas; or the prison guards union, which has succeeded in redirecting state revenue from education to prisons, with a resulting  436% increase in prison spending since over the past 30 years. (For more on prison guards’ impact on education, please see “Lack of School-to-Prison Pipeline.”)

Student Test Score Data is Useless and Detrimental to Student Wellbeing

If he wants greater accountability, he is also barking up the wrong tree.  VAM is inconsistent and unreliable except for teachers at the extremes and only if averaged over three years. (For more on VAM, see here, here and here). In practice, test scores are rarely averaged over three years. Most districts want evaluations every two years and some are moving toward yearly evaluations, thus invalidating the data for all teachers. Yet, even if they are averaged over three years, the data would still be meaningless for the vast majority of teachers who fall somewhere in the middle, away from the extremes. While VAM could still help weed out the very worst teachers, it would likely lead to many good teachers losing their jobs and many mediocre ones slipping through the cracks. The consequence for students could be a net decrease in good teachers and a net increase in mediocre ones because of all the false positives and false negatives.

Johnson is dead wrong in his assertion that teachers are harming students by opposing VAM. The use of student test data to evaluate teachers is terrible for students precisely because it does nothing to improve teacher quality, while potentially forcing many good teachers out of the profession. Furthermore, it encourages the continued use of high stakes standardized exams, which take away class time from real learning, encourage teaching to the test, and unnecessarily increase the stress and anxiety children already face at school.

Teachers Unions are Complicit in the Proliferation of High Stakes Tests and VAM

The teachers’ unions, however, ARE hurting students as well as teachers by their inability to effectively resist free market “reforms” like VAM.

Let’s start with the obvious. The free market “reformers” are winning the propaganda battle: large segments of the public support VAM and it has been an easy sell. Their claim that student test scores will rise with good teaching and remain stagnant or decline with bad teaching not only appears self-evident, but it supports the popular belief in meritocracy. Cheerleading for the merits of VAM has become so ubiquitous in the press and among politicians that it is now considered common sense by much of the public. As a result, the “reformers” have easily pushed it through in districts throughout the nation, including the three largest school districts, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The unions have done little to counter this. On the contrary, whenever the “reformers” invent a problem, the unions typically agree with their premises, and quibble over the solutions. A case in point is evaluation reform. Both the NEA and the AFT have jumped on the bandwagon, joining right wing critics in their proclamations that the evaluation system is broken. Many have even consented to the use of VAM, including most recently the CTU, in Chicago, and UTLA, in Los Angeles. The difference is that the unions also want some say in the matter. For example, many are demanding that the new evaluation systems provide teachers with meaningful data that can be used to improve their practice. Ironically, VAM cannot do this, while existing internal assessments (e.g., unit tests, essays, lab reports) are already being used this way by teachers. Likewise, evaluators observing classroom practice could provide useful feedback, but they typically do not because they are overbooked, undertrained and biased.

Digging Their Own Graves

This has been a mistake for the unions both strategically and in terms of the propaganda battle. Rather than educating the public about how devastating VAM and high stakes testing are to children and working to abolish them, union acquiescence sends the message that teachers support them. This only serves to solidify public support for both VAM and accountability through testing.

It also sends the message to the “reformers” that the unions are easily bamboozled. All you have to do is cry “the sky is falling and our precious children will be hurt by the fallout” and teachers will go on the defensive, bitch and moan, and then accept some slightly watered down version of the “reform.” This only encourages the “reformers” to continue with their agenda of slashing public education funding, destroying the unions, and giving away as much of the system as possible to private entrepreneurs.

What a Good Evaluation System Could Look Like

Since VAM cannot accurately assess teacher quality, nor provide useful feedback to help improve their practice, the unions should refuse to accept it in any form. What they should be demanding is a sufficiently-funded system of well-trained outside evaluators (not administrators) who observe teachers blindly (i.e., they do not know the teacher and have no stake in the school or district) and often enough to be able to make valid assessments and critiques. The system should be primarily remedial, not punitive—that is, the goal should be to provide the feedback and support necessary to help improve struggling teachers who want to remain in the classroom, while providing a fair and accountable system for removing teachers who are incapable of or uninterested in doing their job correctly. This would not only help prevent future teacher shortages, it would help all teachers grow and it would improve their morale—an important component of a healthy, collaborative learning environment for children.

A Winning Strategy?

In a sane and rational society, the arguments against VAM would be sufficient to end debate and consign VAM to the dustbin of history. The problem is that few people are aware of these facts, something that could easily be rectified with an effective, large scale public outreach campaign. Unfortunately, the teachers unions have been asleep at the wheel, allowing the free market education “reformers” to frame the debate and then impose their will, leaving the unions in the weak position of constantly having to constantly fight back.

Such campaigns are not cheap, but the teachers’ unions have relatively large war chests and could afford it if they chose to use their vast resources in this way. Instead, they spend the lion’s share of their resources on lobbyists and political campaigns which have done little to stem the decline in education funding and student services, or to educate the public about the implications of the various snake oil “reforms”  they are being sold.

Teachers Offer the Wealthy an Escape from Poverty

The following is from Anthony Cody’s excellent critique of the education portion of Obama’s state of the union speech. In a nutshell, if a teacher really did increase the lifetime income of a classroom by $250,000, so what? Spread out over the 40 years of each student’s career, that would amount to only $250 per person per year, enough for a nice date, Sunday afternoon beers or some practical work clothes, but nowhere near enough to bring poor kids into the middle class. And if he really wanted us to not teach to the test, he wouldn’t tie our evaluations and salaries to students’ test scores.

Last night in President Obama's State of the Union address, he repeated a familiar refrain about the importance of teachers. 

A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance.

But it seems that it is those in power who are actually using teachers to escape from the realities of poverty these days. 

President Obama offered as evidence a citation from a recent Harvard report:

We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000.

He went on to say,

Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let's offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn.
 

There are several problems with this. As others have pointed out, if you take a classroom of 25 students, and spread $250,000 over their 40 years of earnings, this amount comes to a grand total of $250 a year per student. This is unlikely to represent an escape from poverty. (see more thorough responses to the Chetty report here, and here.)

The second problem is a glaring contradiction, a logical flaw so huge it has been overlooked by almost every journalist apparently too polite to challenge the administration on it. If you do not wish teachers to teach to the test, if you want them to be passionate and creative, then how can you insist that their performance be measured by the use of test scores?

Let us be crystal clear. The Obama administration has made the use of test scores to evaluate principals and teachers a pre-condition for federal aid. Both Race to the Top and the NCLB waivers require that states develop evaluation processes that incorporate this data.

To see the rest of this article, please click here.

Tens of Thousands Protest Education Cuts in Spain

From the Teacher Solidarity Blog:

Over 40,000 took part in the demonstration in Alicante, calling for an increase in the numbers of teachers, increased funding for school resources and the end of prefab classrooms.

In Valencia, protestors demanded that the Generalitat paid the €50 million it owes to schools.
One of the region’s education unions – UGT-PV – is also taking the ex-President of the local authority to court over misuse of public funds.

Education International reports that as a result of the missing money, some schools in the region are facing closure, and teachers have been asked to take cuts in salaries and go without Christmas bonuses. But this is not an isolated case, with schools in other autonomous regions suffering similar financial difficulties.

Teachers Scab On Themselves in Pennsylvania

Chester Upland Teachers Will Be Working For Free, Indefinitely (image from Flickr, by danielmoyle)

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) slashed $900 million in state education funds last year, according to Think Progress. As a result, the Chester Upland School District in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, which gets nearly 70% of its funding from the state, expects a $19 million shortfall. The school district has told its teachers that by Wednesday it will not be able to pay their salaries. So the teachers, with the support of their union, have decided to work for free.

The school board and the unions both asked Corbett to provide financial aid for the district, but he refused. Pennsylvania’s Education Secretary Ron Tomalis said the district was being punished for failing to properly manage its finances. However, even if the district hadn’t mismanaged its finances, no worker should be expected to nor should they volunteer to work for free.  By doing so, not only have they become slave laborers, they have weakened their bargaining positions when revenue becomes available to start paying them again.

From the bosses’ perspective, if the workers are such true believes that they’d work for free, then they’d certainly work for less and do more if asked—something that was happening even before the district ran out of money. Last fall, Chester Upland laid-off 40% of its professional staff and about half of its unionized support staff, leaving class sizes of over 40 students. They also withheld pay hikes worth approximately $800,000 from its teachers, in violation of its contract with them.

Of course it is terrible that the district is out of money and that the children will suffer. However, it is not the teachers’ fault, nor their responsibility. Working for free doesn’t fix the problem, either. Kids will still be in overcrowded classrooms, which is both unsafe and pedagogically unsound. The schools will still be unable to afford supplies. And the teachers will gradually stop coming to work when their own bills start to pile up and other means of earning a living become available.

A scab is someone who undermines workers’ struggle to improve their pay and working conditions by replacing them on the job during a strike or by working for lower wages. Teachers who work for free are serving as scabs for their bosses. They are bailing their bosses out and giving them a free ride for their mistakes and corruption. They are helping the bosses to underpay and overwork them.

They are also undermining other workers’ struggles by sending the message that at least some workers are willing to work for free if they think they are providing a public good. Considering the deplorable condition of so many other state budgets, it would not be surprising to hear that other school districts and social service providers can no longer afford to pay salaries. The administrators of these agencies might very well look to Chester Upland for inspiration.

Less Than 25% of California Schools Have Librarians

(Image from Flickr, by library_mistress)

Less than 1 out of 4 California schools have full-time credentialed librarians, according to the state Department of Education (See San Francisco Chronicle, 1/2/12). There are only about 900 school librarians in the state, down roughly 20% from two years ago. Many schools have cut librarians entirely, while others have hired them part-time or are sharing them with one or more other schools. Some have put non-credentialed staff or parents at the front desk and one school has even hired students to staff its library.

While anyone can run a book through a bar code device, credentialed librarians are trained to teach students research techniques, deliver curricula, and instill a love of books and reading. Credentialed school librarians can help teachers develop lesson plans and research projects and teach students how to use databases, properly cite sources, and explain copyright laws. Some studies have found a correlation between having full-time credentialed librarians and student achievement.

California’s 1% Goes On The Offensive

We've Saved the Schools! (Image from Flickr, Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com)

Three of California’s billionaires have committed over $20 million of their own money to launch and win a ballot initiative that would help close California’s perennial budget hole, according to the Los Angeles Times. However, their plan would only increase tax revenue by $10 billion, not even enough to close next year’s budget gap, which is already projected to exceed $13 billion. It will do nothing to restore the $21 billion that has been slashed from K-12 education over the past three years, or the billions cut from higher education and services for the poor, elderly and disabled. But worst of all, it relies on regressive sales tax hikes and a restructuring of the income tax code that leave the 1% unscathed, placing the burden of closing the budget gap on the rest of us.

The Think Long Committee is headed by investor Nicolas Berggruen, philanthropist Eli Broad and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. The group also includes former governors Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, according to the Times.

On the surface, their plan seems like a well-intentioned attempt to help bolster California’s crumbling infrastructure. After all, it promises to increase K-12 funding by $5 billion per year plus add several billion more for higher education. In reality it is an attempt to take the wind out of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has been criticizing the skyrocketing cost of higher education and the defunding of both K-12 and higher education. The Think Long millionaires and billionaires are hoping the promise of increased education funding will convince the protestors to go home and give up their desire to make “the rich pay.”

This is unlikely, as their plan calls for a regressive 2% sales tax hike that disproportionately impacts lower income peoples, and an income tax restructuring that places the burden of closing the budget gap on middle income people.

The new tax code would leave those making less than $45,000 without any income tax liability, while those in the $45,000-95,000 range would be taxed a modest 2%. However, there would only be one more bracket, $95,000 and above, which would be taxed at 7%. This means that lower middle class families would be taxed at the exact same rate as millionaires and billionaires. In reality, though, those making millions would be paying a much smaller percentage of their income in taxes, since they tend to have more deductions and exemptions and bring in the bulk of their wealth through capital gains, which would be unaffected by their plan.

The California Teachers Association plans to float a countermeasure that would increase taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents. However, even their plan doesn’t go far enough, aiming only to close the state’s existing deficit and doing little to repay schools for the huge cuts they’ve suffered over the past few years, let alone raise revenue to a level that might bring California back among the top five states in per pupil spending.

What the state needs is a revenue increase in the $50-100 billion range, something that it is fully capable of achieving if income taxes on the wealthiest residents are sufficiently increased, along with business taxes and capital gains taxes. If we go back to the pre-Reagan era, the highest tax bracket paid from 50-90% in federal income tax on all income above a certain threshold. There is no reason the state of California can’t do likewise, for example, raising tax rates on all income over $500,000 to 20% or even 50%.

If we consider just the state’s 80 billionaires, this could bring in more than $10 billion. However, if we include each of the state’s roughly 600,000 millionaires, such a tax ought to create a budget surplus.

Of course this is exactly the kind of scenario the Think Long group is trying to avoid with their preemptive strike.